


what a time

by scoutshonour



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Pre-Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, angsty and weirdly sad but ultimately soft and ends on a good note, we are acknowledging our feelings in this household
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23731351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoutshonour/pseuds/scoutshonour
Summary: On a whim and unable to sleep, Nancy calls Steve in the middle of the night. They take a long drive, catch up, and have the conversation they should’ve had a year ago, finally embarking down the road of forgiveness and reconnection.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 26
Kudos: 59





	what a time

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like everyone has their own opinions and feelings about nancy and steve's fight in season two, but we can all agree that resolution - the lack of one - was _bullshit_. this fic takes no sides, and i did my best to show both their perspectives. they were both wrong and they were both right. we love all these teens here. 
> 
> title from the julia michaels & niall horan song of the same name, "what a time". (it is _such_ a stancy song, highly recommend!)

It’s just one of those nights.

Nancy can’t sleep and for as badly as she wants to, she also doesn’t. She has that gut feeling that she’ll wake up either screaming or sobbing or maybe even both. She can’t stand being awake either, sitting in the dark with just her and her thoughts. It’s stupid, and she’s tired, and all she wants to do is call Jonathan. 

She’s always itching to call him, but the urge is stronger now. He’d get it. He’d know what to say. He’d sit with her in the discomfort until it went away. 

She already spoke to him a few hours ago, but she wants more. It doesn’t have to be a full conversation. She’d be happy just to hear him breathe, know herself he’s alright, and then maybe she could try closing her eyes. 

She tiptoes across the second floor and down the stairs. The kitchen light is turned on, and when she comes closer, she isn’t surprised to find Mike whispering into the phone. He’s speaking softly, back turned to her. She hears the smile in his voice. She can’t tell if he’s talking to El or Will. 

Nancy and Mike have fought over the phone before, both a Wheeler desperate to talk to a Byers, but she doesn’t consider it this time. She’d already gotten over an hour with Jonathan earlier today, and for some reason, the idea of cutting Mike off right now is especially unbearable.

She sidles past him, giving his shoulder a squeeze, and a half-knowing, half-teasing look. 

His eyes widen. He holds the phone closer to himself, raising his other hand as if to swat her away. She only nods towards the phone then delves further into the kitchen, not without swatting _his_ hand, of course. 

She distracts herself for a few minutes by making two cups of hot cocoa, the sound of Mike’s hushed voice and laughter pleasant white noise to her ears. The hot cocoa definitely isn’t as good as Karen’s, but she doesn’t burn the house down, so automatic success in her eyes. She walks back to Mike and pushes the second mug into his hands.

He gives her a bewildered look but accepts the mug. “Jonathan’s asleep,” he tells her.

Nancy nearly asks him if Will or El could just bring the phone into his room, let her listen to him for a few seconds, but soon cringes at herself. It’s a really weird thing to ask for, though she knows when she brings it up to Jonathan tomorrow for their daily call, he’ll find it sweet. In almost exactly a year from now, when they’re off to college and squeezed together in their bed and their shitty apartment, all she’ll have to do is turn over in bed and hear him. No fighting for the phone with Mike, no phone calls period, no tracing the scar on her palm and longing and aching. It’ll just be them in New York and that’ll be enough.

“Thanks,” Nancy says. She goes back to the kitchen, sits on the counter, and takes her time to finish her hot cocoa. She can’t hear what Mike’s saying, but his voice, sleepy and low, is comforting. He sounds so giddy and light that it makes her chest hurt.

She expects the hot cocoa to at least tire her out, but if anything, it just makes her more awake and restless. She paces the kitchen, glancing out the window. She needs to get out of here. Get some air, move without worrying about waking her family up, clear her head.

The car keys are in her parents’ bedroom on the nightstand where Ted keeps it. Karen’s a light sleeper, so Nancy won’t risk it. She has the option to walk around the neighbourhood, maybe take a run. That would’ve been daunting a few years ago, being by herself in the dark, but it doesn’t faze her anymore. 

Still, a run doesn’t seem like enough of a distraction. It won’t distract her from herself.

If things had turned out differently, she wouldn’t have to think hard about it. She’d just walk to Barb’s house. After exactly two rocks thrown at her windowpane, Barb would stick three fingers up indicating that Nancy needed to wait three minutes. Exactly three minutes later, Barb would hop out, fully dressed. She would have sour worms, their favourite, for them to share from a stash she kept in her bedroom for whenever Nancy was over. 

_I can’t believe I’m sneaking out,_ Barb would say. 

Nancy would respond with, _It’s okay, you can go back if you don’t want to._

Barb would look offended and respond, _of course I want to._ They’d walk to the playground from their elementary school, sit on the swings, talk through the night. 

They did it a few times. For Nancy, she had gone over when her parents were fighting at night and were convinced that because the kids were sleeping, they wouldn’t have heard it. For Barb, it’d be because she simply couldn’t sleep or had a bad day at school that she couldn’t stop thinking about.

Nancy’s forgotten how good it was to have that — a girl-friend. Jonathan’s steady and enough just the way he is. Their love is a good one. She knows this. But she also knows that a romance can’t be the foundation of your life, your partner the only person you have. While she knows college will show her a whole world full of people completely different from the ones in Hawkins and who care about the same things that she does, that’s a whole year away. That’s not right now.

And then it hits her, both the stupidest and most brilliant idea that can only arise from bone-deep exhaustion. 

There _is_ someone she can call.

She knows the idea’s stupid. Definitely unfair. Steve was probably sleeping, and even if he wasn’t, she was just expecting him to drop everything and come pick her up at midnight on a weekday? 

He’d do it. She knows he would. But he’d do it even if he didn’t want to, and that’s what scares her the most.

But now she’s latched onto the idea. Maybe it’s the tiredness, the loneliness, the fact that she misses Jonathan so much, the fact that she’s missed Steve for so long — a sordid combination of all four, most definitely — but she’s going to do it. 

He might not answer. Might say he’s too tired, can’t use the car, or flat-out say no. That’s okay. She’ll have asked. He’ll know that she had thought of him.

Nancy lowers her empty mug into the sink before returning to Mike. She taps his shoulder. “Just give me two minutes. I need to talk to someone.”

“One second,” Mike says into the phone before lowering it away from his face. “Who’re you calling?” 

“Someone.”

“ _Just_ two minutes?”

“I swear.”

“Jonathan’s asleep.”

“I know.” 

“Then who —”

“ _Just give her the phone,”_ an exasperated voice huffs from the other line. 

“Thank you, Will,” Nancy says. 

“Don’t tell Jonathan we were up this late,” another voice chimes in. 

Nancy’s mildly surprised that Mike’s talking to both El and Will. She knows that things between El and Will were lukewarm at best when they moved out last month and that Will had promised Jonathan he’d try with her. Considering that the move was only a few weeks ago, this is a big improvement. Jonathan will be pleased.

Nancy pictures Will and El huddled close by the landline, both shushing each other to keep quiet. She stifles a smile. Jonathan’s not the only one she misses.

She raises an eyebrow at Mike, waits for him to follow the instruction now that El and Will have given it to him. 

Seemingly giving up on knowing who she’s calling, Mike hands her the phone. “Thanks again, you two, I won’t take too long,” she says into the line, then hangs up. 

Her fingers hesitate over the numbers. The awful possibility that she’s forgotten Steve’s number wrecks her for all of one second before muscle-memory kicks in. She types his number quickly with a trembling finger.

As the phone rings, she looks at Mike who’s leaned against the wall across her. “Can I have some privacy?”

Mike attempts a glare, but the bags underneath his eyes and his yawn undercut it. He looks almost adorable. “ _Why?_ What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says lightly. 

“What happened to no secrets?” Mike’s face falls. “Is something wrong?”

Nothing was wrong, at least nothing was wrong in a way that wasn’t normal, that she wasn’t used to, but his concern makes her want to pull him into her arms and crush him into a hug. “I’m calling Steve. I wanna go out for a drive or something, just for a bit. I’d be back soon.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says, his voice turning soft. “I’ll give you a minute.” He retreats down the hall and out of view. Before she can thank him, the ringing stops.

And Steve answers.

“Uh, hello?”

Nancy can’t tell if Steve had been sleeping or not. His voice is scratchy and painfully familiar and she’s forgotten how to speak. 

“Hello?” he repeats.

“Steve,” she blurts out. “Hey. It’s —”

“ _Nance_?” Only one syllable, yet it tears right through her. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“No. I was only wondering if you wanted — I don’t know, go for a drive or something. I —” Nancy has wielded guns, stood unflinching in the face of danger, went after things that terrified her and would have destroyed her had she not destroyed them herself. She can do all of that, but she can’t say what she’s feeling. She can’t tell him, _I miss you._

She takes in a deep breath, leaning her head against the wall. She can do this. “I just wanted to talk to you, is all.”

“We’re talking right now,” Steve says slowly. 

Nancy’s stomach sinks. She understands it for what it is, a firm boundary set in place. It’s fair. He’s still talking to her. A phone-call was good, just hearing him was all she needed. She’d have to hang up soon and return the phone to Mike, but she’ll take this, savour it the same way she savours every second she gets with Jonathan on the phone.

“We are,” she says. “Thanks for answ —”

“Be there in ten?”

She nearly drops the phone. “Are you sure?”

“No, I’m Steve.” A beat. “Don’t make fun of me for that joke.”

She really wants to, but she’s too confused. She pinches herself to make sure she’s really on the line with Steve Harrington and she’d really just asked him to come over and he said _yes_. “If you were sleeping, I don’t want to —”

“I wasn’t. And neither were you, right?” 

She slips her eyes shut. Remembers how often he’d climb up to her room and spend the night when neither could sleep, how she’d do the same with Jonathan after they started dating. “This isn’t weird for you?”

“Are you kidding? _Obviously,_ it is! This is super fucking weird, and I’m half-convinced that I’m dreaming —”

“How spooked would you be if I said it was?” She says, a laugh cracking over the last word. She pictures his incredulity perfectly: his free hand twisted through his hair, making it even messier, his eyebrows rising into his hairline.

“I’d probably believe it more,” he says honestly. “But I’ve pinched myself twice now, and I’m still here, and you’re still on the line, and I’m not saying no.”

“Steve?”

“Nance?”

“I pinched myself too.”

His relieved laugh is quiet, barely audible. It eases all the tension out of her. “I have to ask, though, would he be okay with it?”

“Who?”

“C’mon, you _know_ who.”

“Obviously I know. I just want to hear you say his name.”

“Would Byers —”

“Try again.”

Steve clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Would _Jonathan,_ you know, Jonathan Byers, formerly of Hawkins, son of Joyce Byers, brother to Will Byers and El, I think, I’m pretty sure they’re —”

“Alright, alright. I think I know what that is, yes. What about him?”

“Would Jonathan be okay with it?”

“Yes.”

“You asked him?”

“I don’t have to.” It’s the truth. She’d still talk to him tomorrow. She’d have to weasel an honest and genuine opinion from him that wasn’t _if it makes you happy,_ but she couldn’t picture him getting upset about it. Especially not with him out of the state, and her in Hawkins, not quite alone but close enough. “I didn’t ask him, no. I’ll tell him about it.”

“He won’t care?”

“It’s not that he won’t care, it’s that …” She trails off, trying to think of how else to say Jonathan knew she cared about Steve and that that mattered more. But then she figures, what the hell, what’s she have to lose? “Jonathan knows how —”

The sudden and light grip on her shoulder sends off an alarm in her. “What the _fuck_?” She whirls around, the phone raised between her hands, only to sigh at Mike in front of her.

Mike swears and raises his hands. “Don’t _hit_ me!”

“Don’t _scare_ me!” 

“I’m sorry!” 

“Me too!” 

After a few seconds of staring at each other, both breathless and semi-terrified, Nancy lowers the phone. “I’m almost done, just give me one sec,” she tells Mike, then speaks back into the phone. “Hey.”

“Are you okay!? What the fuck was that?”

“My fucking brother.” She smiles dryly at Mike’s eye-roll. “Mike says hi.”

“No, I _don’t,_ ” Mike huffs.

“He probably didn’t, but tell him I said hi too. I’m gonna go put some pants on —”

“And reflect on why you could’ve just said you needed to get ready, maybe —”

“And I’ll be there soon,” he finishes, a smile in his voice. “Having not reflected at all, because that’s the least crude way I could’ve put it, honestly, and you’re lucky I didn’t say something even worse, like —”

“Yeah, you’re right, I’m lucky.” Nancy finds herself smiling back, her heartbeat a gentle flutter in her chest. “See you soon.”

“See you.”

“And thanks for answering and thanks for just, you know,” she says in a quick rush before she loses her nerve, then hangs up. For a second, she stares blankly at the phone on the wall. Did she really just do that?

“Did you really just do that?” Mike squints at her.

“That wasn’t a stupid decision, right?” 

“I make stupid decisions all the time, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Just tell me I’m not going to do something stupid and hurt someone again.” The words spiral out of Nancy before she can push them back in. She blanches at her own honesty. 

Mike blinks. He takes a cautious step towards her, then another one with more confidence. She doesn’t understand what he’s doing until he awkwardly slots his arms around her and nestles his head against her shoulder. Nancy doesn’t hesitate. She hugs him back, tries to squeeze him tighter than he was squeezing her. 

“You’re good,” Mike tells her, pushing her hair back, something Karen always did for them and Holly when they got sick. “You’re gonna be, anyway.”

Nancy laughs wetly. “When did you get so wise, huh?”

“It’s the height. Gives me extra knowledge and insight. It’s like I’m looking down on you in more ways than one.”

She instinctively pokes him in the ribs. At the high shriek he lets out, she claps a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. 

“If you wake mom up,” he warns, but he’s laughing as he lightly shoves her arm.

“If _I_ wake mom up? I didn’t make that sound, Jesus, you could shatter _glass_ with that.” She lets herself laugh back, blocking her stomach from him so he can’t poke her back. She looks at her baby brother, really looks him over. He’s grown so much so quickly, but he’s still so small. It makes her so sad, but so achingly hopeful.

She lifts herself on her tiptoes to smooth his hair back all the way. “You’re good too, you know? Real good.”

“You sound like mom,” he jokes, but his voice cracks. “I’ll cover you in case mom wakes up or something, okay?”

“Thanks.” She knows she should go upstairs and change into her clothes already, but she lingers. She considers kissing his forehead or pulling him into another hug, but they aren’t those types of siblings. Maybe they could be, someday, but she’s okay with what they are now.

She darts forward to poke him in the ribs again, because sometimes getting in trouble by your mom is worth it to annoy your little brother, but he dodges it.

“You’re the worst,” Mike says casually. He grabs the phone and aims it at her like it’s a threat.

Nancy bites back a sleepy smile as she watches Mike dial the Byers’ number without having to look at the numbers. “Yeah, and you’re not.” She turns around and runs up the staircase.

.

.

.

Nancy’s halfway out her window when she hears Steve’s car pull up. She doesn’t have to turn around to know it’s him. None of her neighbours would be returning home at this hour, and as stupid as it sounds, she just _feels_ him close by.

She fights the urge to look back as she makes her way down the side of her house. She lands onto the grass swiftly, crushing a few leaves underneath her feet. She dusts her hands. Turns around. Puts one foot in front of the other until she’s sitting in the passenger seat of Steve’s car.

It’s not like it’s the first time she’s seen him at all this past year. Of course, she’s seen him around, but it was in the middle of school or with the rest of the kids or in the middle of the world ending, again, and of course, she’s talked to him, but not about anything that mattered and not in the way they used to.

It’s not the first time, but it feels like it. She inhales sharply as she takes him in. He’s wearing the soft red sweater she was always so fond of. His hair is unkempt the way that means he’d been restlessly tousling it. His knuckles clutch the steering wheel despite the car being parked. She can tell he’s trying to keep his face neutral, but there are cracks of openness in his composure, his eyes a little brighter, his lips parted.

He’s so close. She doesn’t know how to handle that.

“Hey,” she says when the silence lasts a beat too long. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, of course. You, uh, didn’t use the front door?”

“Nope. My mom borrowed my house keys since she lost hers, and I didn’t want to leave the house unlocked. I know, there aren’t, like, thieves in this area, and it’s not like a lock has ever stopped a monster before, but.” She shrugs. “Plus I’ve never snuck out of my window before.”

Steve cracks a smile. “Don’t think you’ve ever snuck out, period.”

“This isn’t my first time,” she admits. Before she can figure out how to subtly explain, Steve widens his eyes.

“ _Byers!_ Wow, Nance, I don’t even —”

“Shut up, how did you even reach that conclusion?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” Nancy says. “You know. About a lot of things. Just not that.”

Steve scoffs. “Name _one_ thing I’ve been — actually, don’t, you have way too much shit on me, but you know, I _was_ right.”

“Yeah, yeah. You were right. Big moment for you. I’m happy, truly.”

“Me too,” he says, softer. He clears his throat then and backs out of the driveway, finally leaving the Wheeler household and going wherever they’ll go.

She doesn’t know what to do with his sincerity except return it in her own way. “Hey, Steve?” She drags her thumb down the scar on her palm, finds it easy to say what she’s thinking in the dark. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Steve doesn’t say anything as he drives down the street, but his half-smile illuminated by the moonlight says enough.

.

.

.

For a few minutes, Steve drives aimlessly around the area. They talk a little, nothing of much importance, but with the same ease from before.

“He keeps expecting me to give him free tickets as if I don’t know that he _hates_ me,” Steve says as he approaches Hawkins middle school.

“Mhm.” She glances at the school. She swallows the lump in her throat as she thinks about how much smaller the school looks now that she’s older and in her senior year. It doesn’t feel that long ago, only four years since she was here, but when she actually thinks about that stretch of time, it seems like she’s lived half a dozen lives since then. “Mike doesn’t hate you, he just thinks you’re annoying.”

Steve snorts. “Thanks for softening the blow for me. Just need the tiny one and then all your family will find me annoying.”

“Please, my attentive father doesn’t remember enough of you to find you — hey! _I_ don’t find you annoying.”

“You’re a shit liar.”

“You’re just a shit.” Nancy pokes her thumb through the hole in her pants right below her knee. “I don’t think you’re annoying, not at all. I just think you’re … you.” She doesn’t know why she says it, if it makes sense, if she wants it to or not.

“Shit.” His voice is so completely and uncharacteristically grave that she already knows he’s making a joke and she’s able to relax. “ _Am_ I me? I didn’t even realize, but fuck, I think I might be —”

“If I interrupt you, will you stop?”

“All this time, I never let myself think about it, but now, it’s unavoidable —”

“ _Steve._ ” She’s trying to sound annoyed, but she’s laughing. 

He grins at the sound of her laughter, continuing, “I spent so long running from it, but the truth is, I —” He cuts himself off suddenly. He slows the car down to a stop on the side of the road, too dark out for Nancy to recognize where they are. 

The silence in the car is overwhelming. She wants to reach out, touch his knee, his hair, but she doesn’t know if that’s okay and couldn’t stomach it if he pulled away. She sits on her hands instead, knows her voice will crack but says his name anyway.

“Nothing’s wrong.” At the pointed look she gives him, he raises his hands defensively. “I’m serious! I’m good.”

“Bullshit,” she says without thinking. She wants to rip her own tongue out. “I’m —”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”

“Don’t tell me what to say. I’m —”

“Nope.”

“Steven.”

“Nancen.”

She stifles a smile. “If something wasn’t wrong, you wouldn’t have just stopped the car.”

“I’m unpredictable. I’m a bad boy.” The joke falls flat with the tremor in his voice.

“You’re really not,” she says meaningfully. 

“I don’t think we should talk about it.”

“Why not?” She sits upright and stares him down. She figures they can either rip the bandaid off slowly or all at once. It already stings anyway, and she’s always been impatient.

“ _Why not?_ Why bother? It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Of course it matters,” she bites out. “Why wouldn’t it?”

Steve props his elbow against the car door, leaning his head against his fist to face away from her. She wants to pull him forward, make him just _look_ at her. “If it really mattered,” he says carefully, “We would’ve already had this conversation. It’s been nearly a year. You’re with Byers —”

“Oh my fucking _God._ It’s not Byers, it’s _Jonathan_. What is with you and him!?” She’s itching for a fight. There’s so much spilling out of her and she doesn’t know where to put all of it. Part of her tries reeling it back in, telling her that it doesn’t mean she can just put it out on Steve, but he’s rising to the bait, finally fucking looking at her, and she sees it clearly. He’s leaking too, and he doesn’t know where to put it either.

“Are you fucking kidding me? _He’s_ why it doesn’t matter because you chose him!”

“I didn’t _choose_ anyone! You broke up with me, and for what —”

“ _For what!?_ Oh, because you calling our relationship bullshit was me overreacting, yeah, that’s right.”

Nancy bristles. She leans forward to jab a finger at him. The seatbelt gets in her way, and she hisses, fumbling to remove it. “You weren’t listening to what I was saying. You took the one thing I said about us and blew it out of proportion! And I didn’t choose anyone, because _you_ walked away from me.” 

“Only because you were already too far away from me that it didn’t matter!” 

The seatbelt finally gives in, zipping back into place and off of Nancy. It’s the only sound in the air as she takes in his words and tries not to scream. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve takes a deep breath in and a deep breath out. “You know,” he says, a crack tearing over his words. “Don’t tell me you don’t.”

Nancy knows. Of course she does. “Tell me.”

“You loved him and not me. And I’ve had a year to accept it, and I have.”

“I can’t believe you. Did you think I was just pretending that entire year, then? That’s who I am to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” If Steve says that one more fucking time — 

“ _It matters.”_

“No, it doesn’t, because we’re no one to each other anymore. I mean, what is this? Why’d you call me here? Because _Jonathan_ didn’t answer?”

“Don’t be an ass. Don’t bring him up because you have nothing better to say.” Nancy’s chin starts wobbling. She’s not sure how much longer she can hold back from crying. “If you didn’t want to come, you could’ve said no.”

“Maybe I should’ve.”

She doesn’t know why that’s the last straw, but it is. It’s the blow that hits the hardest. She sits back, digging her fingers into her palms, trying to stop her head from pounding. He’s right. What is she doing here? 

“Nance.” Steve sounds as confused and upset and exhausted as she does, but she can’t tell what he’s thinking. If he’s going to offer to drive her back home or go for another round of yelling.

But Nancy doesn’t want either. She wants a rewrite. Do the whole thing over again, go back to the start — before Jonathan moved, before Halloween, before the night of Steve’s party. She’d do things differently, she would.

But she can’t go back. The next best thing, the only thing, is forward, and she’s taking the step.

Nancy gets out of the car, closing the door behind her. Steve’s confused voice is faint as she jogs to the other side and pulls his door open. “I’m not doing this in your car as we both yell and say things we’re gonna regret tomorrow. We’ve done that already. If you wanna go back home, then that’s what we’ll do. But I want to — I want to go walk around the block, or something, just, get out of your car. Not yell, but talk. Can we?”

He still looks baffled. But he nods as he unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of his car. Once he’s locked the car, he raises an eyebrow at her, gestures for her to lead.

She tugs on his arm, pulls him to the sidewalk. They walk side by side in a steady and slow pace, their elbows bumping but neither stepping away. She waits until they’ve passed the streetlight to speak. “What did you think that was then? That entire year together, you and me, if I didn’t love you?” She’s calmer now, not yelling or accusing. She ignores the hitch in her voice as she adds, “Did you think I was just waiting for Jonathan?” 

“Yes,” Steve says. His hands are shoved into his pockets, his gaze set straight ahead. “And ... I was trying, okay? I was trying to be the perfect boyfriend for you, help you move on and get to be normal after all that shit, but I didn’t know how, and it just felt like I wasn’t enough and he was. You couldn’t say it, and I thought, then what the fuck are we even doing here? If you didn’t love me, and you already loved him, and I knew he’d give you what you needed, and you wouldn’t — you wouldn’t resent him.”

His words are constricting her heart. She knows whatever he says will only make it worse, but they can’t stop now. She doesn’t want them to. “Why would I resent you?”

Steve laughs. The sound is bitter, full of hurt. “You told me we killed Barb.”

Nancy doesn’t realize she’s stopped walking until Steve suddenly comes to a halt, turning around and frowning when he spots her over a foot away.

“What?” he asks.

She can’t tell if he notices her tears or not. Maybe if she doesn’t move or speak for a few seconds, the tears will die down, but then she blinks and it all comes rushing down her face. 

“ _Nance_.” His voice cracks over her name. She can’t see him through the blur in her eyes.

“No, no, don’t — I’m fine.” But it comes out strangled, choked over her tears, and she doesn’t know what the _fuck_ she’s doing, forcing Steve out in the middle of the night and making him talk about the awful things she’s said to him and cry in front of him. And _Jonathan,_ God, he’ll tell her it’s fine, that of course, she and Steve should be friends, but he’s a good man, so he wouldn’t tell her how terrible she is for it. She cannot believe how she’s just hurting them both, all the time, first Barb, now — 

Steve doesn’t say a word as he crosses the space between them, wrapping Nancy up in his arms. He always gave the best hugs. It’s more than his height and long arms. She can’t describe it; everything is still heavy, but this is him, offering to shoulder some of the weight, and that cuts through all the noise in her mind.

Nancy nestles her head into his shoulder. She really hopes he can’t hear her breathe him in, the familiar scent of his green apple conditioner. Considering how hard she’s crying, she probably doesn’t have to worry about that. Her arms are tight around his neck. She doesn’t notice her hand in his hair until he makes a small pleased sound and leans into her touch.

A distant voice tells her that this is wrong, that she’s breaking some rule she doesn’t know about. _But Jonathan,_ it tells her disgustedly. The thought makes her squirm for a millisecond until she really thinks about Jonathan and then just starts tearing up some more because she misses him so badly. There’s so much guilt and aching inside of her and she doesn’t know where else to put it but here in the form of her tears running down her face, onto Steve’s shoulder and the back of his sweater.

“I’m sorry,” she rasps out. 

“Don’t be.” His hand is warm against her back where it comes up to rest. 

“You need to hear it. I didn’t mean what I said, okay? Or — I did, but that doesn’t mean it was true. I had all of my shit and I just took it out on you. You weren’t responsible for Barb.”

“Neither were you.”

Nancy rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, unsteady. It hurts to think about Barb for too long. Barb’s all tangled up in the knot of Nancy’s guilt and grief and anger. Has been for nearly two years now. She doesn’t know how else to think of Barb without the rest of it rising to the surface.

“I shouldn’t have said that to you,” she continues. “Shouldn’t have said any of it. I was angry at the world and drunk and upset, and you wanted us to be normal again, and I didn’t — I _couldn’t_ just go back. It felt like forgetting her and what we went through, and I needed to drown in the pain before it killed me. I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

“I think you just did.”

They pull back. Steve’s face is wet, like hers, and they’re both silently tearing up and leaning forward to wipe the other’s face. 

He smiles tentatively at her. She can’t smile back, not in her state, but she pushes his hair away from his forehead, and his smile widens.

“I have a question, but you can’t yell at me for it,” Steve says.

“That’s a terrible precursor,” Nancy replies, but she nods at him to go on.

“So you’ve cleared up that part of the fight, which, you know, thanks, I appreciate that and I needed to hear it, and it means a lot, and I don’t know why this sounds so formal, Jesus —”

“You’re just nervous. It’s okay.” They’re not hugging anymore, but they’re still close, his arm on her back, her hand still in his hair. She smiles wetly at him, and he laughs, and it’s all so familiar that she’s both hurting and glowing with it.

“I’ll just spit it out. You, uh, you couldn’t say it, so was that — I mean, I just — did you not? Or was it Jonathan?”

Nancy swallows hard. “It was me knowing that I was in love with Jonathan and thinking that meant I couldn’t feel that way for you too. It was me, sure that if I told you that while I had feelings for him, then I was an even worse person than I thought.” She pauses, gauges his reaction. She can see the gears in his mind turning, him fighting against believing what she’s implying. “As you can see, I was a fucking mess. Wrong about everything, just couldn’t see it then.” It’s not quite forgiving herself, but it’s a step in that direction. 

Steve steps back. Nancy has to stop herself from stepping forward.

“The way you said it,” he says, his voice thick with disbelief. “Are you saying —” He stops himself, just looking at her openly, everything he’s feeling laid bare on his face.

“I wasn’t with you because I couldn’t have Jonathan or to string you along or —”

“Hey, I know that. I didn’t ever think —”

“It was real,” she interrupts firmly. “You got me through that shitty year after Barb died. But I don’t care about you because you were there for me, I care about you because you’re —” Her mouth curls into a half-smile. “Shockingly, you’re _you._ And I’ve already said a lot and bared my soul or whatever, so there’s nothing left to lose, so I’ll just say that I fucking missed you and your stupid jokes and your loud laugh and I missed talking to you and being near you. If you think you were just some — some way to pass the time, then you’re wrong, if you think that just because I was happy with Jonathan meant that I wasn’t sad over you then you’re _wrong_. I probably shouldn’t have called you tonight and do all of this in the fucking street where like, anyone could hear us, but I’m glad that I did it anyway.”

Nancy’s out of breath and her face’s heated up. She’s mildly embarrassed, but a warmer and stronger feeling overrides it. For a moment, she can’t quite put her finger on it until she’s smiling helplessly at Steve — it’s pride. She’s wielded guns, stood unflinching in the face of danger, went after things that terrified her and would have destroyed her had she not destroyed them herself. She could do all of that, and she can do this too.

Steve’s smiling back, so wide that it takes up his entire face. He’s got this glow to him, pretty eyes even prettier in the moonlight now, and suddenly her heart’s pounding with the familiarity of it all.

They step away from each at the same time. 

Nancy waits for the awkwardness to return, but it doesn’t. 

“I’m glad you did too,” Steve admits. “And I need to, I don’t know, bare my soul too, but just give me a minute.” 

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“Yes, yes I do. But I have an idea on where we should go right now, and it’ll give me some time to think, and I think it’s a good idea.” Steve smiles. It’s almost shy. “You trust me, Nancy Wheeler?”

She doesn’t think twice. “Obviously, Steve Harrington.” 

.

.

.

The car ride is comfortably quiet. 

Steve’s shoulders are tense, his eyes never straying from the road. Nancy doesn’t make conversation. She remembers how he said he needed time to think, and she wants to give that to him, but it’s also making her too antsy to do anything but fiddle with the radio.

After a few minutes, though, Steve clears his throat. “Is there a time you have to be home by?”

“I’ve already snuck out. I don’t think a curfew applies.”

“I know, but like. I don’t have work tomorrow, but you have school. You need some sleep, right?”

“I can always just skip.”

Steve gawks at her momentarily. “What? That’s the least Nancy Wheeler thing you could’ve possibly said.”

“It’s only the first month of school, who cares. And _that’s_ the most Steve Harrington thing I could’ve said.”

“It’s your senior year.”

“I’m taking it seriously, _mom,_ it’s just— what’s one day, in the long run? Hell, I can just skip the first half, go to school second. I probably won’t, anyway, coffee does wonders. I’ll sleep through lunch or something. Don’t worry.”

“Cafeteria’s way too loud. I know you sleep like a log, but the fucking kids at our school could wake up the dead.”

Nancy snorts. “I don’t eat in the cafeteria anymore. I finish my lunch fast in the hall outside of the library, then go in and spend the rest of the period there.”

“What kinda nerds are you friends with if —”

“By myself,” she corrects quietly. “I do it by myself.” 

Nancy should’ve just let Steve tease her. She sinks into the seat, groaning as Steve looks absolutely heartbroken. “It’s not a big deal,” she lies. “Don’t do that with your face.”

“I can’t control my _face._ And yes it is a big deal! Why the fuck aren’t you sitting with Robin?”

“ _What?”_

Steve slows the car down to a stop at a red light. He looks at her properly, his face dead serious as he insists, “Sit with her!”

“Steve, we’re not friends.”

“Then _become_ friends!”

“I don’t know _how_ to. After Barb, I just— I forgot how to do it. It’s _scary!”_

“You’re the most bad-ass person I know,” Steve says simply. The light turns green and he turns left, one hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping his knee. “You’ve done scary things before. You know how to be brave, so be brave. And Robin is _the_ biggest nerd, even bigger than you. Are you going to be afraid of a nerd? After all the cool shit you’ve done?”

His words are comforting but she can’t help but ramble on. “You really think Robin and I would get along? All we have to talk about is the Upside Down.”

“Before Dustin and I became friends, did you think I’d get along with him?” Steve doesn’t wait for an answer. “Fuck no! Absolutely not, I could’ve never pictured it. All we had in common then was the Upside Down too, but it was just our starting point, you know? And you know, I’ll let you in on a secret. Don’t tell Robin.”

“Aw, but this could be a conversation starter with her.”

“Nancy!”

“I’m kidding. I’m absolutely kidding, tell me.”

“It’s kinda hard for her to talk to her band geeks now,” Steve says, frowning. “She just feels light-years away from them, like she can’t connect to their day-to-day problems when you’ve almost died and have to keep this big secret. Sound familiar?”

Nancy sucks in a breath. “Yeah.”

“I wanted to tell her to just talk to you, but I thought it’d be weird, me pushing for you two to be friends since you and me — well. We’re close, but talking about you is hard.” He pauses, lifts his other hand onto the steering wheel. She doesn’t pay attention to where they’re going, too focussed on him. “I should’ve told her, anyway. Just try? I think you two would be good for each other. Might not look like it works, but you can’t know just by looking. You two are different, yeah, but you’re two of my favourite people,” he says like it means everything to him. Nancy gets it.

“I want to try,” she says sincerely, not just for his sake. “And I will. I swear. But only if you call Jonathan.”

The car swerves. The roads are empty, but Steve still looks around wildly. He curses, takes a few seconds to readjust and drive back into the lane. Nancy’s heartbeat picks up a little, but she’s also amused. Steve appears genuinely flustered at the mere idea of speaking to Jonathan.

“This is completely different,” he insists.

“No, it’s not. Like you said, you two are different, but you’re two of my favourite people,” Nancy says stubbornly. “But it’s not just about me. You two have gone through the same shit, have more in common than you think, and you’re always going to be connected by this mess. Doesn’t that mean something?” 

“What would I even say? Calling him is _weird._ ”

“I won’t talk to Robin if you won’t call him.” It’s not true. She just knows he’ll say yes to that.

“Nance, he _hates_ me.”

“You trust me?”

“Obviously,” he echoes back to her.

“Then believe me when I say he doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t.”

Steve parks the car. Nancy hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, hadn’t even realized they’d gotten to wherever they are, but she’s too busy staring Steve down. He needs to get it. 

“ … Unless _you_ hate him?” She can see it perfectly, how good they’d be for each other. If he doesn’t see it yet, then that’s okay. He will.

Steve runs his hands through his hair. He laughs a little, a brief and self-deprecating sound. “Look at where we are.”

They’re parked down the street. Nancy has to lean forward and over Steve to where he’s gesturing. It’s dark out, but they’re close enough that when she squints, she sees it.

The old Byers home.

She laughs incredulously, leaning back into her seat. Being back here stirs up a million different emotions she can barely parse. The most prominent one is saying goodbye to the Byers, clinging onto Jonathan and not wanting to let go. She knew they’d be okay — shared trauma and all — but knew that, most importantly, their love was real. It was the kind of thing distance and time had no control over because neither would let it happen. But it didn’t change the ache in her fingers after letting go of his hand or the emptiness violently carved into her chest at having to watch them drive off. 

The walk home was brutal. Lucas, Max, and Dustin were heading to the arcade, but Mike had declined, lied that Karen wanted him right back home. Nancy didn’t call him out on it, mostly because she didn’t understand why he was lying until about ten seconds into their walk home, he burst into tears. She joined him half a second later. 

“This fucking sucks,” Mike spat out, wiping his face on his sleeve. 

Nancy didn’t say anything, because there wasn’t anything else to say. Nothing would change how badly they were both hurting. She just muffled her sobs with the back of her hand and squeezed his shoulder. They walked home like that, side-by-side, crying in sync, with her arm around his shoulder, his head on hers.

She hasn’t passed Jonathan’s old street since. She couldn’t bring herself to.

As she sits in the passenger seat of Steve’s car while he’s pulling into the empty driveway, she feels raw. She can picture Jonathan waiting on the front porch like he’s done a million times. It simultaneously hurts and heals.

“Tell me why you took us here,” Nancy says. “You said it was a perfect idea, right? I don’t get it.”

“Bet that’s the first time you’ve had to say that,” Steve says with another shaky laugh. He leans back and looks at the house for a long time. “You really don’t?” 

She doesn’t, not one bit, but she’s interested, excitement bubbling in her chest. “Tell me.” She follows his line of vision, her eyes glued to the front door. She must’ve come in through the window more times than she’d entered through the door. More often than not, when she’d sneak in late, Joyce would just ask Jonathan to invite Nancy for breakfast/dinner. She’d rarely have to leave out the window. She’s had countless dinners, “study” sessions, movie nights, all by Jonathan’s side. They must’ve shared about a million kisses inside those four walls. 

Nancy knows the house doesn’t have fond memories for Jonathan. Too many memories with monsters, dad and Demogorgons included. It’s when she reminds herself of this does it make it easier to think about his and his family’s absence, remember the good it’s doing for them.

“Guess.” Steve’s leg bounces up and down, his fingers thrumming along the edge of his seat. 

Nancy carefully rests her hand on his knee. She feels the anxiety drain out of him almost instantly. “Does it have to do with Jonathan?”

He doesn’t look back at her, but he covers her hand with his. “It has to do with all of us. It’s like, we can all pinpoint this one moment where everything changed and nothing, not who you are or where you are in life, would be the same if it weren’t for that. Yours would be my house, right? The pool?”

“Right.” She’s thought about it abstractly, the way one does late at night when you can’t sleep so you try making sense of your life. It’s a dull pain now, but her fingers still tremble. Steve rakes his thumb absentmindedly over her knuckles.

“The moment that started everything happened here. I came to apologize to Jonathan, and you put a fucking _gun_ in my face.” He grins at the recollection, and she can’t help but smile. “And you told me to leave, and I was going to, I was, but —” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

She asks him the question she’s never known how to answer whenever she’s thinking about her Moment: “If you could take it back, would you?”

“No,” he says without pause. “Almost every shitty thing in my life has come from that day, but so has all of the good. I don’t think I would’ve liked the person I was on track to being. I thought, okay, I decided to be better, so that’s it! That’s all it would take. I didn’t want to think about anything before that day, because what would it change, you know? I don’t — I don’t know how to deal with any of it, I’m not strong like you or Jonathan, I don’t know _how_ you went through all that shit and came out of it the way you are now, Nance. I really don’t. I’m used to pushing the bad shit down, and I really thought I was helping —”

“You _were,_ ” Nancy insists, her eyes wet.

Steve’s smile is sad. “I wasn’t what you needed. That’s okay. I shouldn’t have said that shit either, and I should’ve been there for you the way it mattered, and I’m just so fucking sorry. I’ve had so much time to just think about where it all went wrong, and I spent all that time missing you and missing us and thinking about well, if I just talked to you, maybe — but then it just got to this point where none of it mattered as long as you were okay. I’d see you with Jonathan at school, and you were both so fucking happy, and so fucking beautiful together, and nothing meant anything more than that. And that’s kind of how I knew. That I was actually changing. That maybe I was a halfway decent guy, and holy shit, does it fucking _suck_ to be that guy. It was so much easier being an asshole.”

“But you wouldn’t go back.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Steve turns back to face her. They laugh weakly at the matching stream of tears on their faces.

“Fuck.” He wipes his face with the hand he doesn’t have on Nancy’s. “ _You_ did this to me.”

“You did it to me too, so we’re even.” Her eyes are red, her nose is pink, and her cheeks are blotchy, but there’s not that sensation of something inside her being torn apart she’s associated with crying. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t feel bad. It’s just saltwater on her face. “And also, you’re more than a halfway decent guy, you idiot.”

“Three-quarters decent?” 

“I’d say four-fifths.” She offers a smile. “I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but you’re a good guy.”

“You are too. Not a good _guy,_ but you know what I mean.” He hesitates, trips over his next words, but gets them out all the same. “Do you still blame yourself?”

“Depends on the day. I don’t know, I don’t think I’ll ever _not_ blame myself, but it’s not the same as before. Went from being this huge ocean to this —” Nancy huffs, gesturing with her hand. “This _kiddie_ pool. I can swim in a fucking kiddie pool, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, his gaze warm. “Shit. Look at us. We’re kind of well-adjusted.”

“Communicating, being honest, not storming away from each other,” She lists, ticking each off with a finger. “Who have we become?”

“We’ve come so far. Those idiots from Halloween wouldn’t _recognize_ us.”

“I’m going to be cheesy for a second,” She warns.

He nods earnestly. “I’m ready.”

“I think those idiots would be proud of us.”

“Been a while since you called me an idiot, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“Kinda missed it.” 

“Kinda missed you,” Nancy says with so much sincerity that she doesn’t know what to do next, so she just blurts out: “Can we be friends? I mean, are we? I don’t — I _can’t_ go back to pretending like, like —”

“Don’t call me an asshole, but,” Steve says. Nancy’s stomach drops. “Would Jonathan be okay with that?”

She’s so relieved she snorts a hysterical laugh. “I would never call you an asshole!”

“ _Bullshit._ ” He raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth curved upwards.

“Okay, I wouldn’t call you an asshole and mean it.” She wants to ask him why he thinks Jonathan wouldn’t be okay with it. She knows Steve’s asking because he’s considerate like that, but her gut tells her it’s something else. She just doesn’t know what. “I can ask him if you want.”

“Yeah, that’d be good. Could you, also, uh — ask if, um. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m nine years old.”

Nancy almost teases him, except she picks up on how _shy_ he sounds. “Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

“Ask if he’d want me to call him at all. But don’t, like, ask him like you’re asking for me, but you just wanna know yourself.”

“Yeah, okay,” she says as casually as possible. She must do a decent job at masking her surprise, because Steve’s face is full of confusion, a shaky finger pointed at her.

“You’re not gonna ask _why_ I want that?”

“If you don’t wanna tell me, then no. It’s fine. I’ll ask, but I know what he’ll say. Yes to both.”

“Are you —” Before Steve can finish the sentence, the front door to the Byers’ home opens. It’s hard to make out the figure or any distinguishing features other than the person is short and most definitely staring at them. “When the _fuck_ did someone into their house? Who would move in here?”

“Let’s not find out,” Nancy hisses, ducking her head down. “Just go!” 

Steve’s fumbling with his keys and they’re both cursing and he’s pulling out of the driveway so quickly that he nearly hits the mailbox. Nancy’s laughing and Steve’s laughing as he speeds out of the street, all of it so ridiculous in the best way possible.

Steve slows down once they’re turned out of the neighbourhood. “Holy shit. I almost broke that mailbox.”

“But you didn’t!” Nancy cheers, raising her hand for a high-five. Steve’s hand slaps against hers. They break out into another round of laughter as Steve drives off, the air between them light and easy. Like it used to be. Like it might always be.

.

.

.

They don’t go home. Not yet. It’s still mostly dark out, stars dotting the night sky. Nancy’s not tired. Steve asks her if she wants to leave, a cautiousness to his tone like he doesn’t want to either. 

“Not really,” she says, then adds more firmly, “No, I don’t. Do you?” 

“Nope. I’ll park somewhere.” A few minutes later, and the car’s parked in front of the arcade. “Fun fact,” Steve tells her, “this is _my_ parking spot.”

“Nice view.” She nods approvingly. “Your gig at the arcade seems good. Your own parking spot, some time with the kids, and, of course, _Robin_ —”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like … _ooh, Robin._ I’m not dating her.”

“I know that!”

“After our emotional diarrhea back there, you cannot just lie to me right now, especially as unconvincingly as _I know that,_ ” he says in a poor imitation of her.

She lightly swats his arm. “I know _now._ Part of me just assumed, and I know I _shouldn’t_ have, but you guys spend so much time together, I figured, well, if they’re not dating, they might eventually.”

“Won’t happen.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me,” he says, and she does. “I like her, just not like that. She feels the same way. She’s my best friend, and honestly, I think that’s better.”

She puffs out a relieved breath and asks him about his job. Steves talks animatedly about the arcade, complains about Keith not liking him and how the kids keep thinking he’ll give them free tickets (which he does), and tells her about the time he and Robin broke into the arcade two hours after closing because Robin left her backpack by accident. 

“I don’t know if it’s a forever thing,” he admits. “But I like it. No uniform, thank fucking God, less people who knew me from school, and more kids just there to hang out and because they love games. I feel good at something.”

“I’m glad. You’ve got Mike’s stamp of approval.”

“No shit?”

“I overheard him on a call with Will. He told Will not to say anything to _anyone_ about how helpful you were and how much the kids — not ours, just, actual kids in the store — like you. But he didn’t tell me.”

Steve grins. “Holy shit. Holy shit!”

“Congrats.” Nancy bumps her elbow against his arm. “I gotta see you in action, see what the hype’s about.”

“Come over whenever.”

“Invite me.”

“It’s an arcade, you don’t need a reservation.”

“Steve.”

“Nance.”

“Invite —”

“Oh my god, fine, will you _please_ come Friday after four? I’m there until closing and it’d be a real delight to have you.”

“I’d be honoured.” Nancy smiles dryly, fighting back a laugh at the heavy sarcasm in his voice.

He rolls his eyes, but the fondness in them doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does she think he’s trying to hide it. “We’re getting a new game at three, should be set up by four. You can be the first to try it.”

And then she’s asking him about the game, and the conversation goes from there. They play catch-up. With Steve, she learns more about his senior year. His dad’s usual disinterest has been tinted with disgust at Steve’s lack of plans, but Steve’s starting to not care anymore. 

Scoops Ahoy was awful even without the secret lair beneath it. Steve doesn’t say much about his days with Robin, Dustin, and Erica, trapped in the mall, his face darkening and entire body clenching when he mentions it. She tells him that he can talk to her whenever, call her in the middle of the night and she’ll pick him up and drive him around for a change. Though he laughs shakily at her offer, she can tell he knows it’s a legitimate one. 

He shares more about Dustin, how weird it is to see all the kids growing up. She agrees, warning him that they’ll all be taller than him soon enough. Steve looks genuinely horrified.

In turn, Nancy tells him about her plans for university. She’s applying to a lot of schools, none in Indiana, but her heart’s set on Columbia for law. Jonathan’s hoping for NYU for photography. She knows he’ll get in. Nancy can tell that Karen doesn’t want her to leave, but has been nothing but visibly excited for Nancy's prospects. Ted probably doesn’t even know where Nancy’s applying. 

When Steve asks about Jonathan and the move, Nancy speaks for a long time. It’s all a rambling, incoherent mess about how much she misses him, is glad that his family gets a new start away from the ghosts in Hawkins, hates seeing Mike like this, likes that she at least shares her loneliness with him, and how complicated it all is. She knows that they won’t break up and is glad he gets a fresh start, but she wishes that it didn’t have to be like this. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says genuinely. “That all fucking sucks, and I’m trying to think of what to say better, but wow. Nothing can make that better, huh?”

“I missed your pep talks,” she says dryly. “But really, thanks. I — I don’t know, I guess tonight, I couldn’t really take it? Not just Jonathan, but everything that’s happened these past two years. But tonight means a lot to me.” She leans forward, pressing her hands against his. “We should’ve done it sooner.” There’s no blame in her voice. Just mild regret that doesn’t mean much, not when she’s sitting close to Steve with their hands together, having finally, finally crossed the space between them after all this time.

“We should’ve,” he agrees, his tone as blameless as hers. He looks down at their joined hands in his lap. “Better late than never. Even if _late_ is in the middle of the night.”

They meet each other’s eyes and share a warm chuckle. But the moment is quickly undercut with a startling realization: Nancy sees it dawn on Steve’s face the same moment it dawns on hers. 

Her gaze shifts from Steve to outside, the faint glow of morning light all around them. Oh. They talked through the night and into the morning. She feels incredibly stupid for not noticing, but honestly, anyone would miss a sunrise if Steve Harrington was in front of it. 

“It’s morning,” Steve says, his mouth agape. “How the fuck is it _morning?_ ”

Nancy bursts into shocked laughter. 

“Why are you _laughing!_ You’re going to get in trouble!”

That only makes her laugh harder, covering her mouth with her hands and sinking into her seat. “I don’t know! It’s not funny.”

“You’re still laughing.”

“And you’re not. Why aren’t you?”

“Your mom is going to kill you,” Steve says, but he looks so terribly fond. He cracks a smile. “You’re so dead.”

“Not if you floor it.”

Whenever Nancy’s dropped Mike off at the arcade or picked him up, the drive takes about ten minutes. Steve makes it in six.

“Fast enough?” Steve shoots her a crooked grin. The streets were all empty, so he sped through all the red lights, looked both ways at the stop sign but not long enough that he stopped. It’s not the first time he’s driven this recklessly, but before, he wouldn’t have looked both ways at all or checked his speed as often as he did to readjust. It’s a welcome change, a move so different from who he was before, but somehow a move that’s even more _him_.

“That was terrifying.” She grins back, reluctantly turning back to face her house. She can’t make out anything through the windows. If it’s half past six or later, then she’s fucked. Holly’s somehow always the first person up and serves as their parents’ alarm clock, always tugging on Karen’s arm to wake her up. Ted’s a heavy sleeper, but Karen forces him up as soon as she’s awake.

She’d like to hope that Holly’s somehow slept in a little later today, but doubts it. Holly’s sleep routine is something she can always count on, as consistent as the sun rising every day. 

“Gonna climb back up?” Steve asks.

“Probably.”

“Is that a good idea? You haven’t slept, like. At all.”

“I had a power-nap after school,” she says, but knows he’s right. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not watching you slip and _die._ ”

“I’m not going to die, I’ll just — break an arm, maybe a leg.”

“Very reassuring.” Steve nods towards Nancy’s window. “C’mon. I’ll watch you go up, catch you if you fall.” Before she can argue, he’s stepping out of his car and slamming the door shut. He doesn’t wait for her, half-jogging towards the side of her house.

She watches him go, taken aback, before belatedly running after him. 

“Are you gonna go to school?”

“Maybe. Probably.” Nancy flushes, forcing a shrug as she adds: “I’ve got a friend to make, right? She’s in my homeroom English, so I’ll just — make myself talk to her before class starts.”

Steve’s face lights up. “Good! Good. And you’ll ask him for me, right? Jonathan?”

“Of course.”

There’s nothing left to say now, nothing except for a goodbye. Nancy doesn’t know why she isn't climbing up to her room already. She’ll see him again. He invited her to the arcade.

Steve’s bouncing up and down on his tiptoes. “Um. I guess this is where we part.”

“Guess so.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither. So maybe we don’t have to say anything.” Very gently, she wraps her arms around his neck, rising to her tiptoes to press her face into his shoulder. His arms are around her waist almost instantaneously. He rests his chin on top of her head. Warmth floods through her. It’s both familiar and completely brand new, the perfect balance of both. Perhaps what they need most.

After a few moments, they pull back. 

“Go home,” Steve says softly. “I’ll see you at the arcade?”

“Yeah, you will. Uh, have a good day.”

“Sure. Only ‘cause you told me to.” A beat. “I don’t know why I said that.”

She chuckles, sure that she’s feeling as weirdly nervous as he is. “I’ll see you, okay?” She forces herself to turn around then, knows that she’s not going to want to go in if she gives herself more time. 

“Yeah, definitely,” he says behind her.

She’s used to climbing back to her room from sneaking back from Jonathan’s house. She isn’t used to doing it without enough sleep, but the reminder that Steve’s right there, ready to catch her, quells any anxiety, making it easier to reach her window.

There’s a split second when getting the window is difficult. She nearly loses her balance, but regains it at the last second and just kind of flings herself into her room. She lands on her knees, the sound a muffled thud. Not wasting a second, she turns back to the window, poking her head out.

Steve hasn’t moved a muscle from where he’s standing. He gives her a big thumbs-up then mimes clapping, mindful not to make any noise.

She tries not to laugh as she waves wildly down at him. _Thank you,_ she mouths. 

_Thank you too,_ he mouths back.

She watches him turn around, walk back to his car, and drive off, not sure if he can see her staring out, but not caring.

After he leaves, she thinks over what to do now. Maybe she can squeeze in half an hour to sleep. It’s not much, but it can be enough to get her through the day. She’s so exhausted that she doesn’t even look at her bed as she walks backwards and collapses on her bed.

And directly onto Mike.

It takes every ounce of restraint Nancy has to not yell, both out of fear and anger. She rolls off of Mike, onto the other side of her bed.

Mike sturs, grumbles nonsensically. His eyebrows draw together, but his eyes remain closed. She needs to bother him _right now._

She repeatedly pokes him in the stomach. “Mike? What’re you doing?”

“Mm god, stop.” He bats her hand away, turns over to face away from her. “Are you home?”

“No.”

“Okay. Wanted to make sure you got here. You’re here, so shut up. What time is it?”

“You told me to shut up.”

He lightly kicks her. “Check.”

The alarm clock is on her nightstand. It’s on Mike’s side. He could just open his eyes and _see for himself,_ but she’s touched that he stayed in her room, so she checks. 6:07 AM. “Six oh seven. You have another hour unless you wanna get up now.”

“Thanks.” He grabs her comforter, starts lifting it off of him. She gently pulls it back over him. 

“It’s okay. You don’t have to go back to your room. Go back to sleep.”

“You sure?” 

“Mhm. Don’t worry. I’m here. Everything’s alright.” 

“Mm, thanks, Nance. Had a good time?”

Nancy smiles at the sleepiness in his voice. She nods even though he can’t see her. “I did. I’ll tell you about it after school. Now sleep.” And for the first time in Mike’s life, he does what she’s asked him to.

She contemplates changing her clothes, but she’s already in her bed. She lifts the other side of the comforter and crawls underneath. The second her head hits her pillow, she’s out.

.

.

.

Nancy doesn’t know how to stop being so goddamned nervous.

She’s sitting in her homeroom, waiting for Robin to walk in. Her leg keeps bouncing. There’s still ten minutes to class. Only five people, including her, are here. The teacher hasn’t even arrived. But her eyes are still glued to the door.

After an eternity — a minute and a half — Robin walks in. She looks around disinterestedly until her eyes land on Nancy’s and widen at the sustained eye contact. Her eyes are really blue, vibrant in a way Nancy hasn’t noticed.

Nancy waves. “Robin! Hi.”

Robin walks towards her seat, two behind Nancy. “Oh, hey, Nancy. How’re you?”

“I’m alright. You?”

“I’m okay.” She slips into her seat. There are a few seconds of bustle where Robin sets her bag down, takes her binder and pens out, arranges them on her desk, and Nancy’s watching her do all of it. When Robin looks up, she looks stunned that Nancy’s still making eye contact.

“I was wondering,” Nancy says, tripping over the words. “What’re you doing for lunch?”

“Nothing much. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering if you maybe, um, wanted to eat with me? Eat together. In the cafeteria. Today.”

“Sure. Yeah. Sounds nice. Maybe we could eat somewhere else? I know a place. What do you have before lunch?”

“Chem,” Nancy replies, her heart hammering with a pleasant mix of surprise and excitement. “You?”

“Bio. Same hall. I’ll pick you up when class is done, we can go together?”

“Sounds good!”

“Great.” Robin’s smile is small, polite, but genuine nonetheless. 

Nancy wants to say something else, but she doesn’t know what to say yet. She smiles back, and turns back around to fiddle with her pen, ridiculously pleased.

.

.

.

“So where are we going?”

“It’s not cool,” Robin warns Nancy, leading her down the hall. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Okay,” Nancy says, but she’s still excited. She thumbs the strap of her backpack and follows Robin’s lead.

Robin ends up taking her to the school’s stage, located in their small theatre through the backdoor. The door is unlocked. It’s empty, not a person in sight. Nancy’s been here before, but not without anyone around nor with the stage as decluttered and bare as it is now. No props, equipment, tables, or chairs. Just the stage and them.

“Wow,” Nancy says.

Robin snorts. “It’s not impressive. No one else’s here because everyone assumes they keep this place locked during lunch, which they really should. Figured some peace and quiet would be nice. C’mon.” They sit on the stage. Their feet dangle over the edge.

They pull out their lunches. Nancy has a sandwich made by Karen and a container of grapes. She glances at Robin’s lap, finds a wrap clutched in her hands. “What’s in it?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” Robin says. “Bologna? Lettuce? My dad made it.”

A flicker of surprise passes through Nancy’s face. “I don’t think my dad knows how to use the toaster. That’s cool.”

Robin chuckles. “Yeah, I guess. So your mom made that?”

“Yeah.”

They take a few bites of their respective meals. Nancy thinks of a million different things to ask, but they’re all dead-ended questions, things like if Robin likes their English teacher or not, where she wants to apply for next year. She can’t think of anything they have in common aside from the Upside Down.

Well. There _is_ something else.

“I hung out with Steve last night.”

Robin starts to cough. It takes her a few seconds to regain her breathing. “What?”

“I _just_ hung out with him,” she clarifies. “Called him, drove around for a bit. It wasn’t … like that.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Robin assures. “Just surprised. Steve — he just makes it seem like you guys don’t talk.”

“We don’t. Not really. Or we haven’t? I don’t know. I just wanted to say that he brought you up.”

Robin smirks. “Did he call me annoying or a nerd?”

“A nerd,” Nancy says, some of the tension draining out of her. “The biggest nerd he knows, in fact. Even bigger than me.”

Robin snorts a laugh as she swings her legs back and forth. “You know, I used to think — God, don’t take this the wrong way,” she says apologetically.

Nancy waves her off. “Say whatever. It’s cool.”

“I used to think you were super uptight. I don’t — I don’t know why, I guess I’m the uptight one — but after this summer, it’s like, holy shit. You’re cool. You’ve always been cool.”

Nancy ducks her head, a smile on her lips. “C’mon, look at you. I mean, infiltrating a Russian code? Getting into their base? Making it out and kicking ass along the way? I’ve had three different weeks of hell over the course of two years, but on your first time, you just, you handled it perfectly!”

“Perfectly is a bit of a stretch. It was terrifying. I don’t —” Robin stops abruptly. All the light drains out of her face, legs going still, eyes darkening. 

“Hey,” Nancy says as soothingly as possible despite the panic rattling inside her chest. “What is it? You can say anything. No one’s listening. I’m — I’m here.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s fine if you’re not.”

“Are you?” Robin meets Nancy’s eyes, her shade of blue wild and frenzied. “With enough time, did it all just stop feeling so overwhelming?”

Nancy opens her mouth, closes it, does this repeatedly. She tries to think about the right thing to say.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that.” Robin laughs shakily. “Fuck, just ignore me. You ask to eat lunch, not for me to drop that on you. Sorry. Forget I asked, okay?”

“No. I mean, don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m not, it’s just — weird, talking about it.”

“Do you talk to Steve about it?”

Robin scratches her arm, shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah. A little. It’s good, because he gets it, knows what I mean. Nancy, I’m really fine, don’t worry about me.”

Nancy nods slowly. She tears part of her bread, pops it into her mouth. “You sure you don’t wanna talk?”

“Yeah. Tell me about what you and Steve did last night. Did his driving almost kill you?”

Nancy laughs. “Quite nearly. Can I tell you about something I told him?”

“Go for it.”

“Do you remember Barb?” Asking the question leaves a bad taste in Nancy’s mouth, makes her want to apologize for even saying that. 

A pin could drop right now and Nancy would hear it. Robin freezes, mouth opening but no sound coming out. She’s definitely thinking of the right thing to say, a comforting platitude that would be nice but not needed.

“You do remember her, right?” Nancy says gently.

“Yeah, of course,” Robin stammers. 

“I don’t — I don’t know how much you know about how she, um, died.”

“I know how,” Robin says carefully. “It involved some dumb party at Steve’s house? And you were, um, there, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was. The way it happened, I felt so guilty afterwards, sure that if I’d just done things differently, then she’d be here, and that I was a terrible person for letting that happen to her. I know, logically, it’s not my fault. I didn’t kill her. But it’s hard to remember. When the first anniversary of her death came up, I was such a fucking wreck. I got super drunk, fucked everything up with Steve. I thought, okay, if I bring her justice, at least let her parents know _something,_ things would be okay. I couldn’t tell anyone that I knew exactly what happened. I couldn’t scream out the truth the way I needed to, but if I did this one thing for Barb, everything would be fine.

“It helped, sure. But it didn’t just magically fix everything. A whole year had passed. I was so _tired_ of feeling all that guilt. I didn’t know what to do with it. I was so pissed at whoever fucking said time heals all wounds, because that’s the biggest load of bullshit ever. It took me a while to accept that, okay, sure, time is good. With enough distance from it, you won’t be in as much pain, but you can’t only give yourself time. You need … to talk about it, feel whatever you feel. But it does get better. Even if you think it doesn’t, it does.”

Robin sniffs, rubbing her eyes. “You told that all to Steve?”

“Verbatim.”

“And what’d he say?”

“I … don’t remember.”

“But you remembered all of that?”

“… Totally.” Nancy watches Robin’s shoulders hunch up and her sniffing sounds grow louder. “I, um, do remember telling him that it’s okay to cry. Very okay.”

“I’m crying in front of Nancy Wheeler.” Robin’s voice comes out muffled behind her hands. “I’m actually crying in front of you!”

Nancy can’t tell if Robin’s laughing or crying or if it’s both. She angles herself towards Robin, her hands awkwardly limp by her sides. “I can leave? Or I can hug you?”

“Would it be weird if I said yes to the hug?”

Nancy leans forward, slots one arm around Robin’s shoulder, the other around her waist. She tucks her head next to Robin’s. “Definitely not.”

Robin’s shoulders sag. She hugs Nancy back, her grip tight and warm. 

There’s something inherently soothing about the embrace, more than the comfort of a hug. It’s been maybe five minutes. Nancy shared one of the most personal parts of her life to Robin. Robin is still crying. None of it feels awkward, but instead, oddly familiar. It makes Nancy cling onto Robin tighter.

Robin pulls back, dabbing at her eyes. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I think I got snot in your hair.”

Nancy touches the back of her hair and shrugs. “I was going to wash my hair today anyway.” They share a laugh. Nancy gets a better look at Robin’s face: her cheeks are damp, her eyes are a little red, but the light has returned.

Robin tucks her hair behind her ear. “About Barb … I knew her from band. I didn’t know her well, but she sat next to me. She was easily the best clarinet player. We’d always look at each other and roll our eyes whenever one of the saxophone guys were being even more disgusting than usual. In her music binder, where we kept all of our schedules and sheet music, she put a picture of you two on the cover. In the corner, you two were wearing these, like, big sunglasses?”

A sharp pang of nostalgia hits Nancy. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. She didn’t like most people, but she liked you. Loved you. A lot. I hope you know that.”

She manages a smile. “Yeah, I do.”

.

.

.

The rest of lunch with Robin goes by quickly. Less crying, more talking about their teachers, the various forms of stupidity in their school. Nancy asks about Robin’s friendship with Steve, how her job was aside from the Russian base, if the arcade was better (it is). She learns that Robin’s dad is an accountant, her mom is a preschool teacher, and they met through mutual friends. Robin is reasonably close to them, but there are a lot of personal things she can’t talk to them about. 

“You know what I mean,” Robin says, and Nancy nods in understanding.

Nancy already knew Robin was smart, but she didn’t know how smart. They try speaking in French. Robin’s fluency versus Nancy’s four years of French in high school clash. Robin laughs at Nancy’s distress, declaring that French is a stupid language anyway, and they can talk more if Nancy wants to keep improving. Nancy agrees.

Robin in turns asks Nancy about her family, her plans after high school, how she and Jonathan are doing. It’s nice talking to her about it all. She’s forgotten how good a new friend could be, the addictive joy of befriending someone, getting to know them inside and out. 

There isn’t an instantaneous pull between them, not like the one she had with Barb. But there’s still something. Understanding. Respect. Appreciation. Nancy likes Robin. Robin likes Nancy. It’s a solid foundation to build a friendship from and Nancy feels confident that they will. 

When the warning bell for class rings, they’re both shocked.

“Shit,” Robin says. She leaps to her feet. “I can’t believe lunch is already over. I’ve got calculus. You?”

“Um.” It takes a second to recall. It feels like something’s gripping her mind tightly, turning it into mush. “Physics.”

Robin offers Nancy her hand. Despite Nancy accepting, she still stumbles to her feet.

“Whoa. Don’t tell me you and Steve got drunk last night.”

“We didn’t, I don’t —” Oh god. “I’m crashing. I only had, like, an hour and a half of sleep this morning.”

“Fuck. How long were you guys out till?”

“Sunrise? My god, I have physics and then world history. I’m screwed.”

“Yeah,” Robin agrees glumly. “You can’t skip?”

Nancy thinks it over as she slings her backpack over her back. She’ll probably fall asleep in class and definitely not retain any new information. She won’t be missing any tests. If Karen asks what she’s doing, she’ll be honest: she needs sleep. Her mother rarely gets upset if Nancy’s being honest, not anymore. 

“Oh, I’m definitely skipping now. Good idea.”

Robin smirks. “It didn’t even occur to you?”

“Stop sounding like Steve. C’mon.” Nancy gestures towards the door. “I’ll walk you to class before I walk home.”

.

.

.

.

The only admonishment Nancy gets from Karen is: “You should’ve called me! Did you tell your brother?”

“The walk was nice, and I left a note in his locker. Are you mad?”

“I won’t be if you go to sleep now. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Just need sleep.”

Karen hums, scanning Nancy’s face. They’re standing by the doorway. Nancy didn’t have enough time to lock the door before Karen came running into the kitchen to ask her what the hell she was doing here. 

“Are you looking for a lie in my face?” Nancy asks. 

“I know you’re not lying,” Karen huffs. “Alright, go to sleep. I’ll wake you for dinner.”

“You’re not mad?”

Karen cups the back of Nancy’s head. “Of course not.” 

Nancy brings her hands up to rest them against Karen’s, briefly squeezing before they let go. She flashes Karen a brief smile before walking up upstairs. She drops her backpack on her bedroom floor, falls onto her bed, and rests.

.

.

.

The first thing she does when she wakes up is call Jonathan.

She’s in the basement, leaning against the beam the landline’s attached to. It’d be so easy to fall back asleep. Her eyelids keep drooping, but she refuses to give in. 

The phone rings once more before Jonathan answers. “Nancy?” 

And that’s all she needs to fully wake up, immediately responding with, “Yeah, hey, it’s me. Not Mike.”

“Oh, it’s not? Do you know when he’ll be back, I really wanted to talk —”

“Haha, very funny. I can get him for you?”

“Maybe in a minute or two.” His long, audible exhale comforts her. “Hey.”

She slips her eyes shut, savouring his voice in her ear. “Hey. How was your day? And don’t tell me good, or bad, or eh. I want details. Everything.”

“Hm. Okay. First period was —”

“Start from the morning.”

“For breakfast, we —”

“The time you woke up.”

She gets what she wanted, his low and scratchy laugh. “Confidential information I’m afraid,” he says. 

“Mm, so what can you tell me?”

“I missed you. A lot.”

They say it once every call. She should be used to it, and she is, but she’s not used to her heart fluttering. “I miss you too. I actually couldn’t sleep last night. Wanted to call you. Mike was talking to Will and El, at the same time, and they sounded like they were getting along and talking to each other, not just Will, and — yeah, they told Mike to tell me you were asleep. And you can’t make fun of me for what I’m about to say next.”

“I make no promises.”

“Promise.”

“I promise I will not make fun of whatever you’re about to say, since I know it’s probably really sweet”

“You know me too well. How’d you do that?”

“Superpower. Alright, I promised. Tell me.”

“I really wanted to ask them to just, I don’t know, bring the phone to your room. There’s that landline right by your door, right? I didn’t want them to wake you up. Just wanted to hear you breathe. Knew it’d calm me down, make it easy to fall asleep.”

There’s a long silence on Jonathan’s line. 

“Somehow this is worse than you making fun of me,” she says.

“I don’t _make_ fun of you.”

“Make fun of me. Right now.”

“You like me,” he says, his smile loud in his voice.

Nancy nearly giggles. “Oh shit, when did you find out?”

“I’ve had my suspicions. So you didn’t end up asking Will and El, though?”

“No, I didn’t. I guess I felt embarrassed. I did, um. Do something else. I had quite the night. A lot happened, and I’m gonna talk for a while, so just let me get it out, and I’ll tell you when I’m done, and then you tell me how you feel. Be honest.”

“I’m kind of scared. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Don’t be scared. Please.”

“I’m not, I’m just — the way you’re wording it, it’s scaring me a little.”

She draws in a deep breath. “You trust me.” Not a question, but a fact. She knows this. She trusts it.

“I trust you,” he affirms. That seems to be enough for him, because he adds, “Go ahead.”

The events of the past twenty-four hours spill out of her. She’s sure she includes too many details, right down to the hot cocoa she made herself and Steve to her brief conversation with Karen a few hours ago when all she needed to tell Jonathan was about Steve, plus her interaction with Robin, but he doesn’t point that out. She rambles, speaks quickly, and rarely stops. When she does, silence stretching between him, Jonathan will go “mhm” and prompt her to continue.

When she finally gets to her long nap after school, her throat is dry. She wants a glass of water, but she needs to hear Jonathan’s opinion first. “Okay. Tell me what you think.”

“That was a lot. Wow. Can you — ask me questions, maybe? I don’t know where to start.”

“Steve,” she says quickly. “Start with Steve. You okay with me calling him last night? Spending all that time with him, talking about our breakup?” 

“Of course.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I’m not jealous or pissed. You were having a shitty night. He’s your — I mean, he’s Steve. That’s never not going to mean something. And you sorted through everything from last year, which I know has to have felt good. I’m happy for you. Honest. I mean, you _sound_ happy. You also sound a little loopy —”

“God, I need so much more sleep.”

“But like, a happy loopy. It’s very cute.”

“I love you,” she says suddenly. Then, more firmly: “I love you.”

“Oh.”

“I do. And I’m not saying that because you’re okay with me being friends with Steve —”

“But that helps, right?”

“Obviously. But I mostly love you, because you’re you. Don’t change. I mean, do grow as a person, obviously, but I love who you are now, and I’ll love whoever you are tomorrow. I’ll love you and your nice shoulders, your obscure music taste, your dry humour, your photographs, and your big heart. Okay?”

“I love you too,” he says so softly she barely hears him. “I feel like I should give you a big speech now, but you’ve kind of turned my brain into mush.”

She laughs. “You gave me a real nice speech the first time we said it last month. I don’t know, I just. I know you know how I feel, but I need you to know how much.”

“I do,” he promises. “You make sure I do.”

 _I’m not going to cry again,_ she thinks, right as a tear drips down her face. 

“Are you okay, Nance?”

“Course I am. I’m talking to you.”

“Oh, wow,” Jonathan says. “You’re on fire today, you know that?”

Nancy chuckles wetly. Today, she’s cried about a million times, had a total of four hours of sleep, and skipped half the school day. She could be doing a lot better. But as she thinks about all the good things that also happened today, she figures she could be doing a whole lot worse too. “I also have something to ask you. About Steve.”

“You really don’t have to ask if it’s okay to talk to him, you know I —”

“Oh, no, I know. That’s not what it is. Hm. How do I put this? Well, you like him, right?”

A sudden thud followed by a faint curse on the other line startles Nancy. “Jonathan? _Jonathan?_ Tell me you dropped the phone, tell me that’s all it —”

“Just dropped the phone,” he says breathlessly. After a few seconds of fumbling where he must have adjusted his grip on the phone, he sighs. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay. What was it?”

“Um. You asked if I liked Steve?”

“Yeah.” She wishes she was right in front of him right now, see all of the things he’s not saying aloud on his face. “As in you don’t hate him or anything. Right?”

“Right. Of course not.” 

“So you wouldn’t be opposed to talking to him.”

“I guess not?”

“Like, on the phone, maybe. As friends.”

“Oh. That’s what you mean. Oh, I don’t know, he —”

“Does not hate you.”

“ … You talked about this with Steve last night.”

“I can’t tell you,” she forces out with a wince. “That sounds _terrible,_ but it wasn’t anything bad, I just really, really think you would be friends. And that you’d get along!”

“Get along? What? The longest conversation I’ve had with him is when we _fought._ Physically. With fists.”

“Longest conversation so _far.”_

“Remember me punching him? Him punching me?”

“Remember when he came back to your house to apologize to _you,_ not me? And actually stayed and fought _monsters_ with us?

Jonathan doesn’t reply. She’s sure he doesn’t know how to.

“I’m not going to push you. I get that you guys have an understanding or whatever, and I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do, but I think it’d be something worth trying. If it’s still awkward or you guys really aren’t compatible, then, boom, the power of long-distance — you can just stop calling. Think it over. It’s your choice.”

“You think it’s a good idea? Really?” His voice is quiet, tentative. Now she really wishes she was there to put her hand on his lower back, her forehead against his.

But she’s not. She’s hours away from him, different states, towns, schools. All she can do is hold the phone closer and speak softly into it. “Really.” 

“And he wants this too?”

“He does. I think he thinks that you don’t want to. That’s all. Look, do whatever feels right, okay? Don’t feel bad if you don’t want to talk to him, and don’t feel bad if —”

“What’s his phone number?”

Her face splits into a wide, uncontrollable smile. “Got a pen?”

After Nancy gives Jonathan Steve’s phone number, the conversation shifts easily. She asks Jonathan about his day, listens to how El had nervously asked him to teach her how to make waffles, learns about a potential new friend in Jonathan’s class — a girl named Olive who likes to draw, is extremely shy, has a dry sense of humour. 

Time flies by. Soon enough, Mike comes running down the staircase into the basement.

“Mom says to wash up for dinner,” he calls out. “And not to say you’ll be up in one minute if you’re going to spend another twenty talking to Jonathan.”

“One — _two_ minutes,” Nancy calls back. She looks over her shoulder, nodding at Mike. She waits for him to nod back and go upstairs to speak back into the phone. 

“Dinner warning?” Jonathan asks.

“Yeah. We have ten minutes until my mom gets really annoyed, so we’re fine.”

“Your mom used to like me, you know.”

“C’mon, she _still_ likes you. She thinks it’s sweet that we talk all the time, that we write to each other every week.” 

Jonathan’s letter usually consists of a few photographs he’s taken. There’s always one or two pictures of his family, those she makes sure Mike sees. The rest are either photos he’s taken for class or in his spare time, shots of his town, what the morning sunlight looks like in his kitchen. 

Sometimes he’ll write a little explanation of why he sent a particular picture. Other times there’s simply a description of the photograph. They’ve corresponded like this four times. So far, she’s received ten photographs. She keeps them in a shoebox underneath her bed. 

Last week, through Mike, she managed to get Will to take a picture of Jonathan and convince Jonathan to send that to her. In the picture, Jonathan was seated next to El for dinner. He was wearing an old baby blue sweater, the colour fading. There was a hole in the sleeve that wasn’t in the picture but she remembered herself. She had a dozen different memories of her poking her thumb through the hole while he wore it, the two entwined on his couch, his bedroom, or sitting next to each other during lunch. It looked like he was cutting up what appeared to be chicken on a plate in front of him. He was saying something to El while she looked at him attentively. He looked focussed, his eyes slightly narrowed. He didn’t look different from when she’d last seen him, but it still made her ache.

After she received the picture in the mail, Jonathan told her Will got El in on it too. El asked him how to properly use a knife when cutting up her dinner so he could focus on that entirely while Will got away with the picture. After Jonathan had realized this, El had laughed really loudly, and he’d told Nancy that it was the first time she’d laughed in front of him since moving out.

That picture isn’t in her shoebox but tacked up on her wall, next to the photograph of her and Barb at fourteen with their large sunglasses.

Nancy doesn’t send pictures. She writes letters, the length ranging — always at least one page, never more than four. They talk every day, so the letters are never about her day. She’ll talk about things she can’t say on the phone in fear of her family hearing her. Another fight between her parents, her father’s indifference, how difficult it is to see Mike’s heartache. Since Jonathan has a landline in his room, he’ll respond to these on their calls. It’s a tricky communication, but they make it work.

She also writes to Jonathan about him. A memory they shared that she was reminded. Her newfound habit of touching the scar on her palm when his name is brought up. A vision of their life next year. A specific thing she misses about him, like listening to his tapes in his car or his warm hands on hers when they cuddled. It’s cheesy, but it’s real, and it helps make the distance between them seem much smaller.

“I sent my ‘letter’ out today,” Jonathan informs.

Nancy grins. She opens her mouth to answer, but Karen’s voice from upstairs interrupts. 

“ _Nancy!_ Let’s get going!”

“I’M COMING!” In a lower voice, she says to Jonathan, “I think we’re good for five more minutes.”

“Before I forget then, is lunch with you and Robin going to become a regular thing?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Good. She seems cool. You two as friends, that seems right, doesn’t it? I think it’d be good for you both.”

“Me too,” she admits excitedly. “Things are feeling different. Might just be all that’s happened today, but …”

“Good different?”

“Great different. Really, really great.” She closes her eyes, tries to latch onto this feeling. Everything in her life changes quickly enough that by tomorrow, she could very well wake up, hating everything, but suddenly that possibility isn’t as daunting. 

She talked to Steve today, sorted through their shit. They’re finally okay again. He’s back in her life, she’s back in his, and that’s not going to change. She found a new friend in Robin. Jonathan’s happy that she’s friends with Steve and going to try to do the same. None of this seemed possible to her less than twenty-four hours ago, and that bit of spark ignited from that thought feels like hope. That’s something to believe in.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she says. 

“Yeah?” Jonathan’s tone is split, half amused, half dazed. 

“Yeah. Don’t you agree?”

“I do. I really do.”

Footsteps sound from the staircase once more. 

“Alright, I should probably head off to dinner. This is my third warning,” Nancy says. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Definitely. Have a good dinner. While you’re eating, I think I might — no, I _will_ call Steve.”

“Holy shit, _yes._ You’ve got this,” she reassures. “Just be your lovely charming self. He already likes you. Trust me. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She forces herself to hang up, a fond smile on her face as she replays Jonathan’s _love you too_ in her mind. 

Immediately, a hand taps her elbow.

She turns around, expects to see Mike again, only to find Holly looking up at her. 

“You’re late for dinner!” Her little sister says. She reaches up and grabs Nancy’s wrist. 

“I’m sorry, Hol. Who sent you this time?” If Karen sends Holly to get Nancy, it’s because she knows Nancy can’t say no to Holly. Same goes for Mike, but he does it only after unsucessfully trying to get Nancy off the phone himself. Ted does it when Karen asks him to get Nancy, so he won’t go himself.

Holly’s ponytail sways as she shakes her head. “No one. _I’m_ waiting for you. You’re so slow.”

Nancy laughs, so much love inside of her that she could burst. “I’ll work on it. I promise.” She intertwines her fingers with Holly. Hand-in-hand, they walk upstairs and into the kitchen. 

Dinner along with plates and cutlery are set out on the table, but the only person sitting down is Mike.

“Where’s mom and dad?” she asks. She sits in the seat across from Mike. Holly takes the seat to her right.

“Dad’s in the bathroom, mom’s just grabbing something from the kitchen.” Mike pauses. “How’s Jonathan?”

“He’s good.”

Mike looks around, ensuring neither of their parents is within earshot, and whispers: “You told him about last night?”

“Uh, yeah. We’re good. Everything’s good.”

Mike lets out a relieved breath, leaning back into his seat. “Good. You still have to tell me what happened.”

A laugh bubbles out of Nancy’s throat. “After dinner. I’ll tell you everything.”

“I’m sure it got awkward.” Mike raises an eyebrow. They haven’t explicitly talked about what happened between her and Steve, but he knows it was messy and unresolved. 

“It definitely did, but it worked out in the end.”

“The story’s got a happy ending, right?” Mike’s joking, but she hears it. How much he hopes that she mended things with Steve after their bad break-up. For something good to happen after their shitty summer. Their shitty year. Their past two shitty years, honestly.

Nancy reaches across the table, grips Mike’s hand. “‘Course it does.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be five thousand words max! it's been awhile since i've written! i hope this was okay! i did my best! comments/kudos are greatly appreciated!
> 
> if you liked the fic, please consider [reblogging the photoset here!](https://trulyalpha.tumblr.com/post/615808831185993728/what-a-time-on-a-whim-and-unable-to-sleep-nancy)
> 
> i hope you're all taking care and doing well. please be safe. i love you.


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